Mechanical fasteners, which are also called hook and loop fasteners, are useful for providing releasable attachment in numerous applications. For example, mechanical fasteners are widely used in wearable disposable absorbent articles to fasten such articles around the body of a person. In typical configurations, a hook strip or patch on a fastening tab attached to the rear waist portion of a diaper or incontinence garment, for example, can fasten to a landing zone of loop material on the front waist region, or the hook strip or patch can fasten to the backsheet (e.g., nonwoven backsheet) of the diaper or incontinence garment in the front waist region.
Fastening tabs for the left and right portions of a diaper or incontinence garment can sometimes be prepared from a common continuous web, where a cut or cuts having a repeating pattern can be used to form nested pairs of fastening tabs. Such processes typically minimize waste during the manufacturing of fastening tabs. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,387 (Rossini et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 5,399,219 (Roessler et al.); and U.S. Pat. No. 7,371,302 (Miyamoto et al.); U.S. Pat. No. 7,658,813 (Petersen); and European Patent No. 0233704 B1, published Jul. 15, 1992.
Some fastening tabs have more than one region of mechanical fastener (e.g., hook patches) on the tab, which has been proposed to decrease the likelihood of unintentional disengagement of the mechanical fastener members. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,957,908 (Kline et al.) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,851,205 (Hisada et al.)